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Thanks once again to pesk, we have DPBSD MP3s of (count 'em) three EastWest Quantum Leap Goliath Pianos for our analyzing and listening pleasure: the Fazioli F308 2 gig, the Steinway B, and the PMI Bosendorfer 290 - thanks pesk!

First, the things they have in common: None appear to be looped, which is good. But all fail the key down sympathetic resonance test, the brief pedal partial damping test, and the partial pedaling test. All of them have a strange response to the pedal down silent replay test - there is no audible damping during the test (which is good) but the velocity=1 note continues past the end - which should be impossible as no keys or pedals are being held at that point! There are no key up or pedal up/down sounds in any of the pianos, and the velocity layer switches are all quite visible and audible.

In terms of stretching, the Steinway doesn't appear to be stretched, the Fazioli with 82 groups is lightly stretched, and the Bosendorfer with 51 groups is the most stretched. In terms of velocity layer count, the Bosendorfer has 5, the Fazioli has 4, and the Steinway has 3. Seems like some kind of layer count / note stretch trade-off going on there.

The Bosendorfer and Fazioli both have very short note decay times, with the Fazioli bass notes coming to an abrupt stop fairly early. The Steinway has nice long note decays, and is also the only one that passes the pedal down sympathetic resonance test. The Bosendorfer has many of its samples marred by audible "clacks" and "thumps".

Thanks yet again to pesk, we have a DPBSD MP3 of the Native Instruments Kontakt 4 Factory Grand Piano - thanks pesk! I believe this is a free offering from NI.

This is a highly stretched, possibly looped, three velocity layer (with filtering) sample set. It's nice that they included key up and pedal up/down sounds, but I found them to be really obnoxious. It seems to have pedal down sympathetic resonance of some sort, and it surprisingly passes the pedal down silent replay test, but it fails the key down sympathetic resonance test, the brief pedal partial damping test, and the partial pedaling test. The velocity=15 G5 note used to signal the end of the DPBSD tests sounds strangely like a second higher note plays slightly later - very odd.

Yep! I hear that now (doh!). This confirms that the MIDI commands I added to DPBSD v1.7a for the "key down sympathetic resonance" test do not enable things like damper noise, etc, during MIDI playback. I plan to investigate this further, and am betting (hoping?) that additional MIDI commands are needed.

I've done strictly analog recordings this afternoon, and I can't reproduce the decay that you are expecting to see. At the website below I added some pictures and an MP3 in case you want to open it up in Adobe Audition:

Since the expected / characteristic decay is not present on the HP-307, then what are we hearing for the "damper down sympathetic resonance" test? Is it "super fake" sympathetic resonance? I'm really confused.

Originally Posted by dewster

Also your levels could be better, the peak is -8.65dB, and the noise floor is around -72dB.

Thanks for letting me know. I'm new at this, so I'll try to figure out how to improve it. I'm trying not to download Adobe Audition, but I think I might have to.

It makes absolutely no sense to me why many critical sound features are missing when the HP-307 plays a MIDI file - shouldn't all features enabled be the default? Roland is leaving everyone to their own devices, flailing around trying to turn them back on, without so much as even a MIDI spec. It's almost like a major manufacturer isn't standing behind their product or something. People want to buy these things and have them just work, that's why they shell out the big bucks.

Yep, I agree, especially being one that shelled out big bucks. It would be nice if Roland simply activated the current 'Piano Designer' settings during MIDI playback; or at least provided a menu option to enable or disable it. I plan to complain to Roland once I better understand the HP-307 MIDI behavior.

I'm still confused about the analog recordings that I took yesterday -- I hear what sounds like 'sympathetic resonance', but it doesn't seem to have the decay you're expecting. Any insight, or thoughts about what is happening?

Here's another little test to add to the TODO list: if the instrument provides a different timbre for the soft pedal, test how far this extends into the forte velocities.

I've just noticed that in the EWQLP, which does provide true soft pedal samples, that they have only provided low velocity samples. No matter how hard it is played with the soft pedal, the timbre is VERY mellow - it's not authentic.

Thanks to our tireless pesk, we have five DPBSD MP3s of the latest TruePianos offerings - thanks pesk! I reviewed TP Diamond v1.4.1 almost three months ago so this is a good time to revisit them.

Since they are fairly similar, I decided to only analyze the Diamond piano in any depth. All of them appear to be looped, and benefit from fairly long attack samples, but they really could use longer loop samples. The low note decay is nice, but the upper notes decay rather quickly. There is a fair amount of stretching going on, both visibly and audibly. What's interesting is that the velocity layers are smoothly blended, much like the latest hardware-based DP fare, so there is no obvious velocity layer switching going on.

All pass the silent replay and brief pedal damping tests, all fail the key down sympathetic resonance test, and there is no support for partial pedaling. All are supposed to have pedal down sympathetic resonance, but for the life of me I just couldn't hear it (pesk confirms that it was indeed enabled in the options). For some reason only the Sapphire Pedal piano has pedal sounds (clunky loom-of-strings sounds) - all other lack this. And none of them have key up sounds.

I thought 'True Pianos' was modelled, not sampled?Which package am I thinking of, in addition to Pianoteq, of course?

Good question! You're undoubtedly thinking of TruePianos, because I myself have heard this over and over in web forums. I did a Google search of "Truepianos modeled" (without quotes) and got 86,800 hits.

But then I go over to http://www.truepianos.com and do a text search for "model" on all of the pages I'm allowed access to and come up with nothing.

I don't know where the whole "TruePianos is modeled" meme came from, but it seems TruePianos themselves aren't pushing it, at least not explicitly any more. From their FAQ:

Quote

What technology does TruePianos use to produce it's piano sound ?We combine different technologies at different places, following the 'common sense' rule. Things, that generally work better with sampling - we use samples for, and for the features, where samples make the product less versatile - we use other techniques. We are going to proceed with the same philosophy in the future as well. What-is-what may change inbetween the versions to maintain the best quality and experience of the product.

Unless one has a woefully inadequate PC that won't play anything but lobotomized romplers, I'm not sure why anyone would buy their stuff. The layer blending is nice, and the attack sample lengths are adequate, but with those babies comes a fair amount of dirty bathwater.

Unless one has a woefully inadequate PC that won't play anything but lobotomized romplers, I'm not sure why anyone would buy their stuff. The layer blending is nice, and the attack sample lengths are adequate, but with those babies comes a fair amount of dirty bathwater.

From the VSL Vienna Imperial manual:This software contains copyrighted elements of the following third parties:(C) 2005–2009 4Front Technologies

I'm just not seeing in their products what they bring to the table that is exceptional or different.

If they could come up with a very compact efficient solution, with no looping and with all of the other standard features fully functional - kind of a SuperNATURAL piano on the PC - then it could have some real value. As it is, it's a very mediocre offering compared to the other PC sample/player sets.

TruePianos Diamond Re-Review (for v1.5.0)What's interesting is that the velocity layers are smoothly blended, much like the latest hardware-based DP fare, so there is no obvious velocity layer switching going on.

Are you sure that there are "velocity layers" in truepianos? To me this looks like only one single sample with some kind of filter.

I recall downloading the TruePianos trial for Mac OS X a few months ago - the installer was relatively small (around 50-60mb or so), giving me the impression that the package did not use/contain samples.

TruePianos does not meticulously try to replicate existing pianos. Instead it uses a combination of the latest sampler, physical modeling and synthesis techniques to produce our interpretation of great playable pianos.

I recall downloading the TruePianos trial for Mac OS X a few months ago - the installer was relatively small (around 50-60mb or so), giving me the impression that the package did not use/contain samples.

Where there is stretching and looping, there is by very definition sampling going on. TruePianos says they use sampling in their FAQ. They also suggest that they use other techniques, whatever they are. I think they are like Yamaha, and are abusing the word "modeling" to make their products seem more exotic than they actually are.

Are you sure that there are "velocity layers" in truepianos? To me this looks like only one single sample with some kind of filter.

I can only speculate, but a multi-velocity sample of a real piano is almost certainly the input to their process. After some analysis and processing it may just boil down to a filter - who knows? To me it would be more impressive if there was no stretching, and if all the other features (e.g. pedal down sympathetic resonance) worked as they should.

Are you sure that there are "velocity layers" in truepianos? To me this looks like only one single sample with some kind of filter.

If you were to play an acoustic piano, I bet you'd not see any "layers". I think what they've done is interpolation. Call it "layer morphing".

About Kawai Jame's comment that the installer was so small it may not be sample based. I'd add "maybe not time domain samples" What if they use frequency domain samples at a low 10 per second rate and from that they could generate the high rate stereo sound. In short what they store is exactly the kind of data Dewster is plotting. It is very compact and captures the tone well.

Are you sure that there are "velocity layers" in truepianos? To me this looks like only one single sample with some kind of filter.

As ChrisA suggests, it could also be morphing between two samples, one high velocity and the other low velocity. If it is just a filter, then some analysis most likely went into designing that filter. But either of these processes would most likely start with a multi-velocity sample set at it's origin.

Originally Posted by bkmz

And what do you mean "only speculate"? Can't you see that there are no differences between samples on all velocities in Truepianos?...Interpolation, morphing? Between what? They all the same!

There is a timber difference with increasing velocity. Here is a highly compressed sample of the TruePianos velocity layer test, where the volume increase between the notes has been removed:

Clearly there is a timber difference. They obviously don't use a separate sample for each velocity as the VSL Vienna Imperial does. And they are doing it more smoothly than the CP1 does. Beyond that we can only guess at what the actual process is.

About Kawai Jame's comment that the installer was so small it may not be sample based. I'd add "maybe not time domain samples" What if they use frequency domain samples at a low 10 per second rate and from that they could generate the high rate stereo sound. In short what they store is exactly the kind of data Dewster is plotting. It is very compact and captures the tone well.

Adding all the attack and loop lengths together and dividing by 8 gives an average total sample time of:

1) "Time alignment of the phase of a set of musical sounds to be used with samplers" . Patent-pending. Filed by Giorgio Tommasini, as of September 23th 2004.

2) "Determination of modal resonances and body impulse response of a musical instrument by analysis of sounds performed with pitch changes. Application to the synthesis of vibrato & portamento with samplers". Patent-pending. Filed by Giorgio Tommasini and Stefano Lucato, as of December 20th 2004.

Attempts to patent the most obvious and straightforward approach to solving a problem are such a crock.

Both pending since 2004 - I wonder what stage of the patent process would they be at now?

I own Truepianos and have used it for more than 2 years for joyful play. I really love the sound signature and the expressivenss of the sound. And no, it's not just 50-60MB, that's only the application itself. After that you have to download the individual pianos, each of them is about 200-300MB. I know, it's still not near any big multi velocity software piano. I don't know how they do it, and I don't like the fact that they treat this as a big secret.

Overall I was really pleased by the sound for more than two years. The only big drawback was that pedal resonance or any other resonance is not detectable at all, even if you enable it within the software - I have the feeling as if they just claimed to have this implemented whereas there is nothing implemented in this respect.

The only big drawback was that pedal resonance or any other resonance is not detectable at all, even if you enable it within the software - I have the feeling as if they just claimed to have this implemented whereas there is nothing implemented in this respect.

I can sort of barely see some difference between the pedal up and pedal down spectral views, but I sure can't hear any difference. It's like the option checkbox isn't connected to anything.